Jellied Plans

The farm share sent along a bunch of mint. I don't use fresh mint a lot in my cooking, maybe I should, but the first thing I thought of was making mint jelly. I haven't made any in years, because both of the kids stopped eating lamb and that's generally what we would serve it with. However, the kids are spending a lot less time eating at home, so I thought making a batch would be nice. 

Mint leaves were steeped in 4+ cups of water for 10 minutes, then the resulting tea was combined with 5 cups of sugar, 1 package of powdered pectin, and 3 drops of green food coloring and one cup of blue. This made just under 6 cups of jelly.

My red currant plants finally started producing and I have enough to make a batch of currant jelly this year, which I will do when I harvest the rest of the berries. As I do with mulberries, I extract the juice and save it for when I have enough volume. So far I have 5 cups, I need 6.5 cups so I'm close. I also have about 5+ cups of mulberry juice, but I currently have 10 jars of mulberry jelly and 4 jars of mulberry syrup in my inventory so I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe gift stash?

Project Completion

Today I finished a batch of sweet relish I started yesterday. First you have to salt the vegetables and let them sit overnight or, in this case, about a full day before you rinse them and boil them with the syrup. This is a variation of "Grandma's Golden Relish" from The Ball Complete Book of Canning. The changes were that I used half cucumbers (3 cups) and half zucchini (3 cups) and that all the peppers were green. This made 7.5 cups of relish.

I added the white wine to the sauerkraut and also added a little brine since there wasn't enough liquid to cover the cabbage. Now it can ferment for a few weeks in its crock and I shouldn't have to worry about it.

Lastly, I used up three eggplants making "Pickled Eggplant with Mint" from Preserving by the Pint. I didn't have red wine vinegar so I used up my tarragon and champagne vinegars and then made up the difference with cider vinegar. I hope that works - it might be a little harsh. For the mint, I harvested a bunch of stems from my pot of mint in the backyard. Supposedly this is good with some feta cheese and olive oil so I'll have to try that this winter.

After all this work, I can now see the back of the fridge again.

Horse Cookies!

As in, cookies for horses. What were you thinking?

I finally had a chunk of time to thaw out those spent grains from the last batch of beer, and make a batch of horse treats. I drained the grains in a colander but not enough as you'll see in a bit. Here's the recipe:

6 cups spent grains

4 carrots, shredded

2 cups molasses + honey (any proportion will do)

1 bag Canada Peppermints, broken into pieces

5 T. coconut oil

L-R: First, second and third batches. See the difference in color and shape?

Here's where things got interesting. The mix was very watery, but I tamped it down into mini muffin tins and baked for 50 minutes or so at 325. The sugary liquid boiled over and caramelized and the cookies were too soft. While that was going on, I tried a different approach; for the second batch I squeezed the liquid out of handfuls of the mix and placed the little balls on a cookie sheet. Those were baked for 40 minutes. What I found was the first batch was so soft that when I took them out and let them cool a bit, I couldn't get them out of the muffin tins without them breaking. So I took each one, squeezed it into a ball, and put them each onto a cookie sheet and baked them again for about 20 minutes, trying to dry them out. The second round, squeezed out but not in the tins, fell apart in the oven. When they came out I took each one, formed it into a ball again, and put it on the cooling rack. 

The last batch worked the way I wanted it to: each handful of mix was squeezed out and then pressed into the muffin tins and baked for 40 minutes. Then I turned the oven off and left them overnight to finish drying out. This morning they were the correct shape and consistency. Now I know!

Mocha got to eat the grain crumbs from the second attempt - he can't eat a lot of these because the sugar content is so high, but he certainly approved of them!

Done for Another Year

The Topsfield Fair ended yesterday and today I went and picked up my jars, the ribbons, and the cash prize ($16!).  I timed my trip up there so I could catch up with Roxanne, whom I missed on the day we were both there checking out who won what.  She brought me some ground up ghost peppers from her cousin.  I gave her a jar of mint jelly.  It was good to see her again!

The one thing that always makes me sad is that one jar of each flavor is wasted in the process of judging.  They open one, taste it a few times, and then don't refrigerate it.  Of course, it's gone bad by the time we get it back.  I do wish they could refrigerate all the open containers but it's probably just not feasible.

Happy Happy!

Mint Jelly

Hooray for the Topsfield Fair!

First thing we did was make a beeline for the canning exhibition to find that I won a ribbon of some sort in every category I entered.  How exciting!  I was also pleased to see that Roxanne, the woman I met last year, won a whole bunch of ribbons as well.

After that we looked at the crafts displays, the kids learned how to do needle felting, and we ate a lot of fair food.  We checked out the giant pumpkin (1900 pounds), the painted pumpkin displays, the sheep, goats, and bees.  Oh, and the rabbits.  The rabbits are so docile.  Mocha would likely scoff at all of them for being so...tame.

Sweet Pickle Relish

We watched the K-9 exhibition and a pig race and headed home.  The Mounties were not riding today, which was too bad.  They put on a terrific show.

Peach Jam

Seedless Raspberry Jam

Strawberry Jam

Springtime in the Backyard

We went to my parents' house for the weekend and, in our absence, the flowers bloomed.

Also, the mint has been growing, and my mom loves mint jelly.  Time to make a batch, with fresh mint!  And, by fresh, I mean, new growth, picked and immediately washed, ripped by hand and steeped in hot water for 10 minutes.  This is, I think, the reason my mint jelly is so...well...minty.  2+ cups of shredded mint leaves, 4.5 cups of water, steeped for 10 minutes, then strained.  Take 4 cups of that mint tea, add 4 drops of green and 1 drop of blue food coloring.  Mix with 1 package of the powdered pectin, and then 5 cups of sugar.  This makes 6.5 cups of jelly which is processed the usual way.  I've set aside 2 jars to enter in the fair; I would think this falls under the category of "Herb Jelly," don't you?

Lastly, I will leave you with this little bit of excitement.  About 6 years ago I planted a Concord grape vine.  And I've waited, and waited, and waited.  This year, for the first time, little tiny grapes!  We'll be watching their progress all summer.

Making It Up as I Go Along

This is generally my cooking motto, and it was in full force today.  I needed to make some kind of starch for dinner with friends and didn't want to go back out to the store.  (I'd worked overnight last night so I was feeling a little tired...) So I looked in my pantry, spent a little time on line, and came up with this:

Chick Pea and Amaranth Salad

1 cup amaranth

2 cups vegetable stock

1 can chick peas

1 can artichoke hearts

1 can diced tomatoes (with the liquid)

1/3 cup chopped pecans

2 large sprigs of fresh mint

3 scallions

1 garlic scape

balsamic vinegar

pepper

The amaranth was cooked in the stock by bringing it to a boil, covering it and letting it simmer until done, about 20-25 minutes.  I chopped the artichoke hearts, mixed them with the tomatoes and chick peas, then added minced garlic scape and sliced scallions.  I added the mint, all chopped up, and the pecans and the pepper.  When the amaranth was cool enough I stirred it in and drizzled the top with balsamic vinegar.  

And you know what?  It tastes great!

Spring Colors

After letting the violets steep overnight I strained the liquid into a quart jar.  It was so blue it was almost black.  I had high hopes that the final jam color would be deeper as well.  We brought the jar outside and added the lemon juice so that we could enjoy the full beauty of the color change.  I thought it was interesting that the lemon juice made the color change from the bottom up.

Given that I have sworn off liquid pectin, I had to try to convert the recipe I normally use to powdered pectin.  I had 4 cups of violet infusion and 1/2 c. strained lemon juice and to that I added one package of powdered pectin and 5 cups of sugar.  The proportions seem to be correct as the jelly set up nicely, for a grand total of 6.5 cups.  The color, as I had hoped, is an amazing shade of fuchsia which I didn't think was possible.  I tried to get pictures tonight but I'll just have to add them in tomorrow.  If ever a jelly could be described as gorgeous.....

I moved from pink to green as I needed more mint jelly and the mint was just coming up in the garden.  After snipping off the tops of every mint shoot I could find, I had just enough.  I steeped the leaves for 10 minutes, strained them, and mixed 4 cups of the mint infusion with one package of powdered pectin and 5 cups of sugar plus 4 drops of green food coloring and 1 drop of blue.  This also yielded 6.5 cups and is starting to look a little darker now but initially it was the color of mouthwash.  Tasted better, though!

Here's the violet jelly with the mint.  Even this doesn't do the color justice!

Tonight I'll take the candied violets out of the fridge and let them sit out at room temperature for another day.  Then I'll report back as to how they are.  I checked them earlier and they certainly seem like they're doing the right thing.

Salad of Garden Treasures

A little while back, I made a salad entirely of bittercress and goat cheese.  It was pretty sharp, and I wondered if maybe there was a happy medium.  Well, I may have found it.

I was cleaning up the yard yesterday and brought in a large bundle of: dandelions, chickweed, bittercress, wood sorrel, a few mint leaves, and violets for garnish.  I added the last of that Robiola Due Latti and, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, it was very good!  The title of this post came from when my husband asked what was for dinner...

Incidentally, I tried eating the dandelion buds and flowers and...blegh.  Not raw, anyway.  Maybe they can be braised?

Minty Fresh

Before the mint in my garden goes to seed (but after it has gotten completely out of control) I figured I should make a batch of mint jelly.  We tend to eat more lamb chops in the winter, and it's one of the few meats we can get the 6 year old to eat so we have it often enough to use a lot mint jelly.  I was down to 1 almost full jar in the fridge and 1 and a half cups of jam in the pantry.  Each recipe (Certo insert) makes 4 cups of jelly.  This one made just a little bit more so I topped off the jelly in the fridge.

For the record, the best color comes from 3 drops of green and one drop of blue food coloring.

Turnips, Raw and Cooked

One thing our farm share has provided, in abundance, is turnips.  Hakurei turnips, to be specific.  We had a LOT.  Eating them all in salads wasn't an option.  I have used them all up and want to share the recipes here.

First, I made a Shirazi salad.  I chopped 4 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, 1/3 of a red onion, and a few turnips (equivalent in volume to the cucumbers) in a very very fine dice.  To this I added 1/2 c. lemon juice, 1/2 c. olive oil, salt, pepper, and a handful of fresh mint leaves.  Ta da!  It was wonderful, and the mint didn't taste minty at all after mixing with the rest of the dressing.  Even better, the mint and the cucumbers came from my garden.

Then I used up the rest with some potatoes in a curry (the potatoes were also from the farm).  I quartered the potatoes (1/4 pound) and turnips (4 or 5, they're small) and cooked them in oil with some chopped onion.  To this I added 1 T. curry powder and a handful of pine nuts.  After cooking for a little while the turnips tasted sweet, almost caramelized.  This was really tasty and easy!

I've worked through more of the farm share but am left with the green and wax beans and a cabbage.  I'm planning on waiting until Thursday to see if I get a lot more beans and then make a bean salad to can, rather than eat them now.  I think it'll be a good amount.

Early Summer Bounty

Last Thursday I picked up the farm share: 1 head of lettuce, 8 scallions, 8 turnips, 12 garlic scapes, 1/2 a pound of spinach, and then 2 quarts each of snow, snap and shell peas, plus 2 quarts of strawberries. In the rain. The peas and berries were pick-your-own. Brr!

All that's left at this point are the snow peas, the turnips and the garlic scapes, but we're working through them. We had a terrific, completely-farm-share salad:
sauteed snap peas with garlic scapes and mint (the latter from my own garden):
sauteed spinach with the scapes, I also used the scapes instead of shallots for a tequila shrimp recipe we had for dinner the other night, and I brought the shelled peas to my parents' and we added them at the last minute to some cooked baby carrots so they would be heated up but not really cooked. They were excellent. Fresh peas are so tasty!

We Love Mint Jelly

I planted the tiniest of mint plants in the yard a few years ago, and for at least a year it looked like it wasn't going to make it. Now it's just about overrunning the yard. We have so much mint my children eat it right off the plant. They make "mint tacos" - mint wrapped in mint - and gobble them up.

Fortunately, we like mint.

Every year or so I make a batch or two of mint jelly since we also like lamb. We've used the mint in the pineapple mint drink and jam, and in peach mint salsa, and in the pickled wild onions I made last year. But mint jelly is my favorite. I don't like the "mint flavored apple jelly" you get in the store, because why would you add apple juice? This mint jelly is just mint tea with sugar. I use the recipe straight from the Certo package insert:

1.75 c. of mint infusion (steep 2.25 c water with mint leaves for 10 minutes)
Food coloring (I'm out of green so used 4 drops blue and 2 drops yellow)
3.5 c. sugar
2 T. lemon juice
1 package Certo

It's that simple. Makes 4 cups, but I always prepare an extra 4 ounce jar just in case.

You could skip the food coloring but then it just is a strange greenish brown color.

Finally!

The last of the peaches were used tonight to make 4 half-pint jars of Peach Mint Salsa, from The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving. I doubled the recipe to finish up all the peaches. Plus I got to use a green pepper, jalapeno, and honey from the farm share and mint from my garden. It smells more minty and citrusy than peachy in the kitchen tonight. Oh, and I have no idea how this is going to taste - I didn't try it before I canned it. Once I finish I can put the canner away until the next crazy purchase and work on freeing up some room in the pantry in the meantime.

For the camping trip tomorrow (for which I still need to buy bait), I will be bringing some chili, pickles, 3 bean salad, jam, and some of this salsa. Obviously we're not backpack-camping. But this way, I don't have to keep as much in the cooler. Which doesn't fit in the car unless I put it on its side. Oops.

Tat Soi

Tonight's meal was entirely centered around using the tat soi - what I read about it implied that it didn't last long, so I should use it first. I decided to cook it with the pattipan squashes. First I cut up the garlic scapes and fried them in olive oil for about a minute and then added the cut up squash. This was sprinkled with a lot of maple pepper, my favorite seasoning for squash. At the last minute I added the tat soi and stirred it until it was soft and wilted.This was served with lamb, garnished with the pineapple mint jam, and grilled pineapple. It all was delicious! Followed by the salad course: red leaf lettuce, salad greens, goat cheese, mulberries, more garlic scapes (raw this time), and radish, with a maple balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I don't think I've eaten this much salad since I moved out of my parents' house. But I've been enjoying playing around with the different greens, adding a variety of fruits and cheese in almost every one. (Mango, cilantro, and goat cheese make a great combo, by the way.) Just one month of this farm share has really expanded our menu - and we've been known to eat almost anything.

Really Winging It

This time, I'm REALLY going off-script. In fact, there's no script at all!

There is a lot of mint in my garden. The kids nibble on the leaves when they're out playing, I make mint jelly, and sometimes I cook zucchini and carrots with it. But I don't have a lot of other things to do with the mint. However, I'm close to a family from Brazil, and was informed of an easy drink that is enjoyed there - blend a pineapple with a bunch of mint leaves and drink. We tried it, and it's yummy. The gears in my brain started turning and I thought, how about jam?

Here's what I did: blend 1 pineapple with about 10 stalks of mint (just the leaves) in a blender.

This made about 4 cups of a pretty green frothy mixture. Then I added 5 cups of sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and boiled it up. Once it was boiling, I added a package of Certo.

It was no longer a pretty green but more of an olive green as the mint had cooked. It smells very nice, or at least my mom said it did (I have a cold and can't smell anything). I ended up with 5 half-pint jars and a little more. I plan to give some to my Brazilian friends.

Labor Intensive

There are a lot of wild onions in my yard. I have used them on occasion for cooking and found them to be very sharp and garlicky. The green tops are basically chives and we've used those, too. But with canning on my brain, and with a larger crop this year, I began to wonder if... yup, you guessed it... I could find a way to preserve them.

I was particularly inspired today by an article in a magazine which highlighted a "forager" who just happened to be foraging in my hometown. The article mentioned wild onions. Aha! I grabbed one of my new cookbooks and found a Persian recipe for picked onions with mint. I have onions. I have mint. That would be perfect!

Harvesting the wild onions was dirty and backbreaking. I enlisted the help of my 7 year old, only to have to play the land version of "Marco Polo" in return. Then I asked for "20 mint leaves," which were dutifully supplied. After the kids went to bed, I started to try to clean all these tiny little onions. It took forever! If it hadn't been for my husband's help I might still be cleaning them. This was the part that was truly labor intensive: washing, trimming, peeling and washing (again) all these tiny little onions. My hands smell like onions. My house smells like onions. And after all that work, I got just under 1 cup of onions. These went into a jar and then I mixed 1/2 c. cider vinegar, 3/8 tsp. of kosher salt, 20 mint leaves and a little garlic in the blender and poured it over the top. This is supposed to sit at room temperature for 1 day and then be refrigerated or maybe I will process it then. And then I have to get brave enough to try it!
(The backdrop of this photo is from the magazine edible Rhody and was the photo which inspired this whole process!)